


This Is A Gift, It Comes With A Price

by silverlining99



Series: Hunters [5]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-12
Updated: 2010-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:05:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverlining99/pseuds/silverlining99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victory is in the eye of the beholder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is A Gift, It Comes With A Price

**Author's Note:**

> Continues to exist in the Supernatural universe, knowledge of which would be handy through this series. Title from Florence + The Machine's "Rabbit Heart."

The night Jim wakes up in his back room with his shoulder chewed to shreds and fever burning in his veins, Chris comes in after everyone else retires and stands, silent for a minute, by the bed. "Leonard," he finally says. "He's a problem."

Jim groans. His skin prickles with heat. "I know, I know. Don't see why he should be mine, though. Or yours."

"Whose problem he is is up to each of us, Jim, you know that. But I've spent three weeks getting to know the man and I want to make something perfectly clear to you." Jim rolls his eyes up to peer at Chris, waits. "He asks a lot of questions. So far nothing's been a concern. But Jim... there are things he can't ever know."

"Yeah?" Jim yawns. "Like what?"

"Like the kind of things that might lead a desperate man to do something stupid." Jim nods slowly, understanding the real point of the first lecture Chris has bothered to give him in a long time. "Look, Jim, he's a good sort who's gotten a little lost in the woods of late. I'm not telling you to go out of your way to help him find his -- I know how well you'd probably take to *that*. I'm the one letting him stay; he's my responsibility. Just do me a favor and keep your mouth shut on certain matters."

"You got it," Jim says tiredly. "Easy enough. I'm outta here as soon as I can travel, anyway. Hope you two have a long and beautiful friendship."

Chris snorts lightly. "He did save your life, Jim."

"He punched me in the face!"

"Who hasn't?" Jim just groans and Chris leans down to rub his knuckles lightly against Jim's skull. "Okay, get your rest. I just wanted to make sure you're on the same page as the rest of us."

"Fuck," Jim mutters. "So he's got Spock and Uhura wrapped around his grouchy finger, too? What the hell is it about this guy?"

"I told you, he's a good sort." Chris turns out the lamp and pauses in the doorway. "Hell of a bartender, too, as it turns out."

 

 

It's not something they talk about, the slow build from acquaintance to partner to... more. It's something that just happens along the way. In August Jim's on his own and in September he's not; in November he goes in for a few casual fucks and in December he --

He realizes he's a part of something, something bigger than himself.

He never says it out loud. He says it in getting rooms with a single bed and in letting Bones tend to his wounds without complaint and in making sure Bones never lays eyes on his conjuring text. He says it with his hands and his mouth, his body, says everything he can in the language of doing because that's the language he's always understood best.

Bones comes closest to verbalizing it one night, says, when they're sweaty and tired and tangled together, he says, "thank you," on a soft sigh against the back of Jim's neck.

Jim closes his eyes and tries to figure out how he's supposed to acknowledge gratitude when he hasn't actually done anything worth a damn. Somewhere along the line -- and it's like he blinked and missed it, he can't pin it down -- somewhere along the line he started feeling guilty for keeping secrets. He started feeling like what's he's doing, like saving Bones from his own demons, from *himself*, isn't so much a favor or a mercy as it is the worst kind betrayal.

It's one he's going to keep right on committing, though. Because at some point he fell in love.

At some point he had to make a choice between deserving Bones, and keeping him.

He tries to convince himself he's earned the right to do the selfish thing, just this once.

It doesn't really work.

 

 

Christmas comes in a motel in Chattanooga, on the other end of the country where the mountains are swamped by fog. They've hit a dead fucking end in their efforts to figure what the hell has been disemboweling people for five days running. As Eve turns to Day and having a bed within sight becomes too distracting for concentration, they wind up in a Waffle House stuffing their faces and researching as intently as their fatigue will allow.

"Nymph?" Bones suggests, jabbing his finger at one of the keys on Jim's laptop. He scowls at the screen like he can terrorize it into giving up the answer.

"Doubt it. Never met one I didn't like."

At his tone, Bones raises an eyebrow so high Jim imagines it popping right off his forehead, cartoon-like. "Oh god, you haven't." Jim winks and he sighs. "Goddamn it, Jim. Tell me you're joking."

"It was Colorado," Jim says dreamily. "2005. Me, an oread, a mountain lodge... she wore me *out*, I'm not ashamed to admit."

"That's because you *have* no concept of shame," Bones grumbles. He closes the laptop and sighs. "This is pointless. I hate the internet, it's full of kooks and creeps and psychopaths."

"Actually, I once met this--"

"Do *not* tell me, Jim, I swear to God, I will end you." But he is, Jim notices, stifling an exhausted laugh as he drops his head and rubs his eyes. "It's getting late."

"It *is* late. Sunrise is in four hours."

"Someone else will be dead by then." Bones sighs. "We're not going to get this thing."

"Ugh, Bones, be more defeatist, why don't you? You're acting like we've already lost." Jim frowns down at the book of Appalachian folklore in front of him. "I don't fucking lose."

Bones is silent for a long moment. "Everyone loses sooner or later," he finally says, quietly.

Jim peeks at him through his lashes, tries -- not for the first time -- to judge how well Bones is actually holding up through the holidays. Thanksgiving had come and gone in an intoxicated blur of "having a real tough time thinking of a single goddamn thing I should be thankful for right now, so people can take their fucking turkeys and shove 'em up their fucking asses, is what they can do," and Jim had just let him go on.

A week later he'd fucked Bones for the first time. Things have been... better, since then. Once or twice Jim has let himself consider the possibility that Bones has found something to be thankful for, after all.

He knows he has, if nothing else. It's a thought that makes him go still and restless inside, all at once, in different parts of his mind. "Not me," he says flatly. "So you wanna waste time bitching, or you wanna help me go through these books?"

"Fine, fine."

At the last second, Jim glances at the stack of books he'd lugged in from the car. He shoots his hand out, grabs the one on top before Bones can. "Let me guess," Bones says acerbically. "That one has larger print."

"Please," Jim scoffs, pulling the book to safety. "It's got the dirtiest pictures."

Bones kicks him under the table. "Pervert. You gonna finish that?"

With a leer, Jim shoves his plate across the table. "So predictable, Bones, always after my sausage." He grins broadly. "The guy I met on the internet was exactly the same way."

Bones kicks him again. But six hours later, when they've managed to pick up a trail from the freshest victim, take out an honest-to-god Wampus cat, and get cleaned up again, he goes after Jim's sausage all over again.

It's probably one of the better Christmases Jim has ever had.

 

 

January brings a ghost, a possession and a witch. It also brings a blizzard that keeps them holed up for a week in a motel near Des Moines. Bones spends the time moaning about scurvy and rickets if he has to eat one more plateful of crap from the diner next door, and asking the story behind every scar on Jim's body.

Jim tells him everything he wants to know. It's a measure of penance, however small, for his silence on the things Bones doesn't even know to ask.

February brings distraction, and March even more. They fall into patterns and habits; they fall into the rhythm of a life lived in tandem. Jim becomes expert at dancing around Bones's moods, learns to read the varying shades of ire and depression and figure out when to push and when to lay off. For the most part Bones is -- Bones is a fucking *trooper*, Jim thinks frequently, the way he keeps his grief contained instead of letting it turn him inside out and burn him away until all that's left is a shell of his former self.

Jim's seen it happen. Hell, every time he's around Spock he can't help but wonder what that guy was like *before*. Different, he assumes. The dude's too fucking weird for words, and Jim would lay money on it having something to do with everything he went through.

Bones, though, he'd lay money on being pretty much exactly as he's always been. He's a remade man, there's no arguing that, but leaving aside the *circumstances* of life, the career path and the motivation that maybe gives him a darker moods than he once had, Jim is fairly certain Bones has always been a cantankerous bastard with a foul mouth.

It just comes too naturally to be a new development. Which is reassuring, in its way, and also a lull. It's a comfort.

It's all the reason Jim needs to ignore everything else for awhile, and pretend it can go on forever.

 

 

"Dean Winchester," Jim announces, stomping into Chris's place in April, "can suck my left nut."

It's noon and the dirt lot outside is empty. Chris looks up from the rack of glasses he's drying by hand. "Oh, hell. What'd he do this time?"

Jim slams his bag down on a table as he makes his way to the bar, then hops up to lean across it and grab the first bottle his hand can reach. "He broke Bones," he says moodily. "Fucking *asshole*."

"What do mean, he *broke* him? Jim--"

"Jim!" Bones roars, hobbling in. For a man with more dexterity in his little finger than most have in both hands, Jim thinks uncharitably, he really fucking sucks with the crutches. "Would it *kill* you to help me out? Just once? For thirty goddamn seconds?"

"Lay the fuck off," Jim snarls.

Chris looks back and forth between the two of them. "Boys. Boys! First things first -- Jim, give me back my grenadine before you make yourself sick. Here." He shoves a cold beer into Jim's grasping hand. "Leonard, sit your ass down. And *both* of you, tell me what happened and what the Winchester brats had to do with it."

"I'd kill that fucker if he wouldn't just weasel out of it," Jim mumbles. Chris looks at him sharply and he ducks his head, snaps his jaw shut for an abashed second. "It's just -- look at him! This *sucks*."

"Oh, don't be such an infant," Bones snaps, heaving himself onto the stool next to Jim. "So I'm laid up for a few weeks. Could be a lot worse."

"About the only thing I can think of that would be worse would be... fuck, I don't know, being strung up by a djinn or something."

"You are a seriously screwed up --"

"Can I assume," Chris cuts in, "that I'm to be providing accommodations for you two during Leonard's convalescence?"

Bones huffs. "Ask this yahoo, he's the one who up and drove here."

"Well, you won't quit whining about the car--"

"Because we might as well be running around in a *Barbie* Corvette for all the legroom that thing has. It's like you're having a teenage rebellion and a midlife crisis all at once and you're not the right age for either, Jim, your car is a tin can deathtrap--"

"-- for the last time, Bones, stop ragging on my fucking ride! It's not my fault she was designed for *driving*, not for you to be able to put your foot up every time you get a little twinge. And anyway, it's not like there's any point to you cramming yourself in there when you can't do the job."

Bones thumps him. Hard. "So yeah," he growls at Chris. "I guess Jim is looking for somewhere to stash me for a month or so."

"And me," Jim puts in. At Bones's look of surprise, he thumps him right back. "What, like I'd just dump you here? No way." He takes three large gulps of beer. "Even if I do want to hunt that prick down and rip his balls off."

Chris leans back against the counter running along the wall. "I think that's the longest version of a simple yes I've ever heard. Just to be clear -- am I out one room or two for this little sojourn?"

"One," they snap in unison.

Chris just smiles and goes to make up one of his spare beds.

 

 

What pisses him off the most isn't being stuck spinning his wheels until the fracture in Bones's foot heals. He gets tired just like anyone else and figures they're both due for a break to rest. It's as good an excuse as any to hole up and recharge for a bit.

And he doesn't have his panties in a twist about Bones getting hurt at all, no matter what Bones says about him being all too willing to let himself get torn apart but taking it as a personal affront if Bones gets so much as a paper cut. Just because he got worried the *once* after Bones got flung hard and cut his head open on a rock -- Bones could gripe all he wanted about scalp wounds and it being just a scratch and Jim needing to stop fucking hovering already, he was *fine*, but there'd been blood everywhere and for all he'd known Bones might have fractured his skull or something and he'd just been making *sure*.

No, what pisses him off, what has him back on edge -- and it burns like the first shot of tequila, like the occasional cigarette on his untrained throat, it burns like something familiar but forgotten over the weeks since he's had it -- is that they had a good thing going, him and Bones.

Until the fucking Winchesters had to cross their paths. To hell with Dean knocking Bones down a flight of stairs. He's an idiot, Jim thinks often, in the zen-like space in his mind he's better able to find once they're safely tucked away at Chris's. That's what idiots do: idiotic things. A fractured bone is nothing a little time can't heal.

The house of cards Jim had built, the one that had started to look a little like happiness and which they had knocked over just by reminding him of their existence, that's a different matter entirely. He can't just rebuild that.

Everyone loses sooner or later, Bones had said.

Which is total bullshit, Jim figures. You just have to be willing to play to win.

And if necessary, to redefine victory at any point in the game.

 

 

April closes out and May passes in a quiet sequence of days. Jim keeps himself busy by helping Chris run the bar at night, doing odd jobs around the property during the day. If it weren't for the clientele, for the routine topics of conversation, it would feel almost like a normal life.

Every once in awhile it makes Jim want to tear his hair out. Bones starts seeming similarly restless; once his foot heals he throws himself into strengthening long-unused muscles, getting himself back into fighting condition. He's in a foul mood more often than not, the more time that passes, and on the twenty-eighth of May Jim wakes up alone and hunts him down out back, sitting on a swell of earth and staring out at the barren landscape. "Any time you feel like telling me what's up is fine with me," he says as lightly as he can manage, dropping to sit next to him.

Bones doesn't look at him. "Her birthday's next week."

Jim's stomach twists. "Bones..."

"A year, Jim. It's been a year and I've got nothing. Not a single goddamn clue how to find her."

"We *will*," Jim insists. "I promised you, didn't I? Scotty's still dreaming up ideas and -- and I think there really could be something to those ancient Abyssinian rites Chekov is translating, you know, he says--"

"I know what he says. Just like I know there's no fucking chant or spell that's gonna get me back a single one of the days I've missed with her. So let me be pissed off about that number getting bigger and bigger for awhile, would you?"

"Yeah," Jim says tightly. The decision, the plan that's been tugging at the back of his mind for weeks, snaps into place. "Listen, uh. I hate to do this right now, but... my mom called this morning. I need to go take care of a -- a family thing real quick. I shouldn't be gone more than a day."

Bones sighs. "No, that's fine. Everything okay?"

"Yeah, absolutely." He should feel bad, he thinks, for how well he lies through his teeth. "Just, you know. Gotta play the dutiful son every so often. So, uh. I need to head out -- see you tomorrow, right?"

"Tomorrow," Bones agrees. The silence that falls feels awkward, tense, but the second Jim plants his palms against the ground to push up, Bones snakes his arm out and pulls Jim into a hard kiss. "Call if you get held up, would you? Don't make me worry about you, too."

"Sure thing," Jim mumbles against his lips. "Bones... never mind. Tomorrow."

He drives half the day. Him and his car and the desert all around him, like it used to be.

For this last stretch of time, everything is exactly as it once was.

He stops in Arizona, just before dusk, and he lies out on the hood of the 'Vette as the world turns pink and gold and purple around him. If Bones were beside him, he thinks, he'd say --

He doesn't know what the fuck he'd say. Something stupid, most likely. Something that doesn't mean anything, doesn't mean: this is the world I think is worth saving.

Something that doesn't mean: you're the one I want to save it for.

When it's dark, when he has to flick on his headlights to see anything other than the stars in the sky, he kneels in the place where two dirt roads meet and begins to dig.

 

 

It feels like cheating, like crossing a line everyone knows is not to be crossed.

He just doesn't give a damn anymore.

 

 

He doesn't have to wait long. He hasn't even straightened up when a light female voice sounds from behind him. "Someone better be planning to put out at the end of this date. I hate a tease like nothing else."

Jim stands and turns to see the kind of blonde bombshell he'd have happily fucked once upon a time, sure, if he met her in a bar and she weren't completely evil. "I ask a lady out," he says easily, "I always give her what she wants."

"Jim Kirk." Her blood red lips widen in a delighted smile. "Well, well. What brings you out on a night like this?"

"Sale of the century." She regards him curiously. "So you know me. Do you know my partner?"

Her laughter spills out into the silence of the desert. "Of course I do. No offense, sweetie, but he's far more interesting than you, to the likes of me. The gossip on him is much juicier."

Jim frowns. "Then let me make it juicier. I want to make a deal," he says flatly. "Leonard McCoy -- I want him to have his daughter back. I want him to be *happy*."

The demon tilts her head. "How... disgustingly sweet. But there's no such thing as a free lunch, Jimmy boy. I can't help but notice your friend's not here to pay up."

"Because he's not going to." Her eyes narrow slightly; he gets the sense she's practically vibrating with the anticipation of hearing him say it out loud. There's no option but to oblige. "I am."

There it is, the sadistic smirk. "I'll let myself be sick over the generosity later. Point of clarification, darling: all warranties are void once payment comes due. Just because we don't drag *him* to hell doesn't mean he gets to keep reaping benefits once we take *you*."

"I figured," Jim says steadily. "He'll be fine by then. I'll get him ready."

"Will you, now," she says in a lilting tone. She laughs lightly. "You believe whatever lets you sleep at night, sweetheart."

Jim looks her dead in the eye. "I'll sleep just fine."

"You hunters." She sounds almost fond. "You're always so *firm* in your convictions. It's cute, it really is." She strolls to his car and hops up on the hood, crosses her legs gracefully and leans back on one hand. "Let's talk terms."

"Standard or I walk," he says. "Ten years."

"Jim, Jim, Jim. You're not here looking to win the lottery. You're asking me to sell out one of my own. That's a pricey proposition."

Jim snorts, shoving down the panic that this could slip away from him if he doesn't tread carefully. "Don't give me that. I'm not some asshole up shit creek with no choice but to haggle, and your bitch went rogue in the first place. I can't imagine that inspires much loyalty -- not that I'd believe you capable. Ten years."

The demon watches him, purses her lips in consideration. "I like you," she finally says casually. "Ten years, you got it. *And* I'm going to throw in a favor."

"You'll forgive me if that doesn't inspire confidence."

Her laugh is rich and baritone and sends a chill down Jim's spine. "Don't be so hasty to judge. I'm going give you what you're asking for -- provided you *really* want it."

"I want it," Jim says firmly.

"Let me finish," she snaps. Her eyes flash shiny ink before clearing, and she smiles sweetly. "The favor is that I'm going to let you know exactly what it is you're bargaining for, and give you one last chance to walk away."

"What do you mean?"

She looks at him gravely. "I mean why we're willing to throw another demon under the bus, and for someone like *you*. You're right -- she went rogue. But who cares? We come from a place of chaos, you know that. Good for her for being creative, I say."

"Yeah, *so*?"

"The *child*, Jim. She poses a threat to your kind *and* mine, and... well, my boss happens to feel she'd be more easily dealt with in her father's control than in her mother's, should that day come."

"Fuck you," Jim snaps angrily. "I'm not doing this to get her back just so you scum can come along and take her out. She stays safe."

"I told you already, all bets are off in ten years' time. By then the dice will be rolled one way or another, anyway."

"How so?"

Her expression goes grim, and she begins to talk. The more she says the colder Jim goes inside, the warier.

When she's done she smiles brightly. "So! Now that you know... *do* we have a deal?"

Jim takes a deep breath and opens his mouth to answer.

 

 

The sun is high and scorching when he pulls up to the bar. The dark, cool interior is a relief, and Jim breathes deeply for a moment before looking around and finding Bones in a booth at the back. Some of his turmoil settles, just at the sight. "Hey," he says, dropping down across from Bones. "Miss me?"

Bones rolls his eyes, but one corner of his mouth tugs to the side. "'Bout as much as I'd miss a recurring rash."

"You saying you itch for me, Bones? That's sweet." Jim winks and reaches across to steal Bones's beer and cool his parched throat with a long sip. "How's your foot?"

"Same as it was yesterday, dumbass. It's fine."

Jim stares at him for a minute. Bones looks back at him. Underneath the heavy facade of distraction and depression that's been normal of late, Jim sees trust in his eyes, trust and patience, happiness to see him. Something aches in him, deep inside. "Is it good enough to travel now?" he presses. "To work?"

"Yeah, I think so. Got a particular hunt in mind?" Bones smirks at him. "Or did getting out on the road just remind you how long it's been since you wrought havoc and destruction?"

The light jibe makes Jim regret everything, and still nothing at all. He wishes everything were different. He wishes nothing ever had to change. "Bones," he says quietly. "There's something I need to tell you."

Bones waits, his eyebrow lifting more and more the longer Jim stays silent. "Jesus, Jim," he finally says. "What is it? What's -- is your mom--"

"She's fine. I just...." Jim hesitates before giving himself over to wherever this goes. "Bones, I found them. I know where your daughter is."

Bones goes perfectly still, but for the slow dawning of comprehension across his features.

Screw the ten years, Jim thinks, and the kid can go hang for all he cares. He did it for this, for the look on Bones's face and the knowledge that it didn't come at a far steeper cost.

Game over.

He wins.


End file.
